This Tuesday, the INDEC will announce the inflation for January, which according to the forecasts of private economists it would be around 6%. The index thus rose by 0.9 basis points compared to the December figure, which was 5.1%.
An end to the downtrend in meat is key to January’s rally. In the last months of 2022, the effect of the drought caused the supply of livestock to increase and the meat on the stalls to decrease, which allowed the price index to close November at 4.9%, the lowest level since February.
But meat rose close to 20% in January, while much of the rest of food also moved upwards, with increases of 5% for the consultancy firm LCG, which estimates monthly inflation at 5.5%.
Private surveys show that inflation for the first month of the year will be between 5.5% and 6.5%. For EcoGo it was 5.7%, while Fundación Libertad y Progreso measured 6.3% and C&T reached 6.4%, the same record as the CPI Ecolatina for Greater Buenos Aires.
Workers’ inflation, as measured by the Metropolitan University of Education and Labor (UMET) and the Concertation and Development Center (CCD), stood at 5.5%. The increase “was driven by seasonal products such as tourism, fruit and vegetables, up by 0.2 percentage points compared to the 5.3 recorded in December”, they specified.
The Survey of Market Expectations (REM) prepared by the Central Bank (BCRA), projected an inflation advance of 5.6% per month and 97.6% year over year for January.
One of the measurements that caused concern was that of the City of Buenos Aires, which reached 7.3% in January, and became the highest since July last year. In this way he has accumulated an advance of 99.4% in the last 12 months.
In January, City staple groceries increased 7.75%, after increases of 5.1% in December and 3.8% in November.
Until last October, the national CPI and that of the City of Buenos Aires moved in sync, with differences close to half a percentage point. But since then they show more and more distance. In November and December, inflation in Buenos Aires marked 5.8%, while national inflation recorded 4.9% and 5.1% respectively.
How will prices continue?
The upward trend in food continues for February. According to the consultancy EcoGo, they rose by 2.8% in the first week of this month, which constitutes “the largest weekly change since last March”.
According to the LCG survey, the Fair Prices program, with a monthly increase of 3.2%, did not stop the increases in January. However, food and beverage price increases slowed in February compared to the previous week, rising from 2.7% to 1.8% per week.
With this trend in January and February, the government is already starting to admit it the objective of bringing the index below 4% in April will be difficult to achieve. With the monthly record around 6%, inflation for the year would remain around 100%.
AQ
Source: Clarin
